Graphics Comparison - Far Cry 3

Which version of Far Cry 3 has the juiciest-looking boar meat, you ask? We did a quick side-by-side comparison of Far Cry 3's opening scene to get quick idea of which one looks the best. What do you think? (Spoiler: It's PC)

Hard to even tell the difference in details, since the vid doesn't even go beyond 720p. But, mainly, because the console versions seem to have overly high gamma. Especially PS3. In the darker bits, the PS3 footage even seems to shows a bit of static, on account of the gamma. What's up with that? Is it universal or is just GSpot's recording? Makes me wonder, because it's making the PS3 footage look rather bad in comparison. Hell, even PC medium settings seems to look better than the X360.

Anyway, if it weren't for that, I wouldn't even comment on the graphical difference. Everybody knows the routine by now. It'll always be the same until it isn't, and only then is it worth mentioning again. Something else I did find odd though, across all versions, is that strange shadow all characters seem to have, relative to the PC. Uh, Player Character. It's most noticeable in the shop segment, the woman has a shadow that's impossible to result from that light on the ceiling, that's right above her. It's an effect... seems to serve to denote characters, but definitely makes them look worse. Less realistic, anyhow. To me, that's worse.

Something other than the graphics that was amusingly compared, if only by accident. The 4th comparison, when he's exploring, looking around, pistol in hand. Notice how differently he turns the camera, between consoles and PC, hah. It's laughable. I wouldn't NOT play this game on a console the visual potential is lower. I wouldn't because it requires a friggin' mouse!

I prefer console versions. Because UNLIKE PC Games, you can easily resell your PS3 and 360 games if you don't like or want it anymore. Can you resell your PC Games? NOPE! No one, not even gamestop or Dimple Records will even buy it off you. LOL. I don't think you can even resell it on eBay without screwing your buyer. Well, I guess you can always throw it in the dumpster where it belongs.

And with all the money wasted on upgrading your PC, I can buy a bunch of videogames for my PS3 easily. And how do you exactly play Far Cry on the PC anyway? Is it point and click like those Myst games? LOL!

Consoles are identical in all ways other than like small shadows and light. PC is worlds away from both as anyone with half a brain could have told you without even looking at the video. Still makes you wonder what the point of installing and most likely troubleshooting a PC game just for some extra eye candy. Especially since gaming computers still cost quite a chunk. Even with xbox live memberships I've not come close in terms of cost for my xbox as I have for my PC that I use to play games.

It is not a true comparison until you add modds and high res texture packs. Then you will see the real difference. Take Skyrim. Without modds, the comparison was just a little better on the PC. Add the modds and it is on a whole different level.

I'm lucky enough to own all the platforms this game is sold on, including a PC with dual GTX 680s. Clearly the PC is by far the best option graphically - even the 720p format of this video fails to capture the difference at high resolution on Ultra, and bear in mind you can take the PC beyond Full HD resolutions. But this was only one reason why I choose to play Far Cry 3 on that platform. It's also important to me not to have a disc cluttering up the shelf. With SSD hard disks and substantially more memory than a console, the loading times are pretty much zero, even when fast-moving across the island. All that said - I've spent about £4000 on my PC, while I would hope it's better than a years old £250 console, it's an option affordable by very few people. No-one is going to make a game that makes a substantial difference for such a small portion of the market. And from these videos and others, it seems clear the gameplay and sheer enjoyment it's not substantially different on any platform - and rightly so. I hope you all enjoy this awesome game whatever you play it on!

And as always, for me at least, it comes down to the ability to modify my game on the PC that remains the reason why I will very rarely ever purchase a console. PS2 was the last console I ever owned and it was only purchased and used for playing Gran Turismo 4 and the Metal Gear series.

Thanks to whoever made this video. It's just what I was looking for to help me decide whether to wait for the game to go into the bins at the Walmart. Now I know that PC gaming is officially dead. All my GTX 590 is good for now is playing Crysis Warhead and folding. To be fair, as long as people can't tell the difference, the game makers would be fools to spend a penny more than they do on the graphics, so I don't blame them, I blame the idiots like the ones in here who didn't see a problem with Crysis2, either. Demand better by not buying this dark, cartoony port with the water that looks like green paint.

It seems these comparisons truly bring out the best in people. Ie. console owners like you @wwefan4ever spamming PC "graphics whores" for wanting to play without the drawbacks of current consoles pushed to their limits by lag and tearing. There's only ever the odd reason to own a console and it's for games like Halo and Uncharted, etc. For everything else that's available on PC, like this game, it's a no-brainer.

Save your coin and buy a good PC. Alternatively if you're in your 20-30's, buying PC games for consoles, what the hell are you thinking? This is the reason the PC community is dead! I know you said you've got the PS3 version but then there's the X360 owners mindlessly paying for a service like Xbox Live while no-one can find anyone on PC servers because they're all on the bloody XBL and PSN! WTF!?

So many people complain that they can't lay down and play on PC with mouse and keyboard, but then those ignorant enough to say that don't even know an X360 controller is supported for PC on just about every damn triple A game these days!

Bottom line is modern games on consoles tear and lag, X360 owners are being ripped off for Xbox Live, PS3 has the advantage here but when a good PC game comes out for X360 and PS3, both parties could be on PC strengthening a FREE community and having a higher quality experience overall.

I own an 360 and PS3 and don't regret that, but they're getting less and less use these days and I refuse to pay for an online service (xbox live) that I can get elsewhere free.

This debate is getting really annoying now. Graphics and Raw power the PC will always be better, and win hands down. The PC is FAR AHEAD of consoles. The DIFFERENCE is consoles are more affordable, that is it. PC beats the crap out of any console.

Look the PS3 and 360 versions in Separate videos in Youtube...You will find no Difference...what ever they ve done here its a fake..you can only find some screen tearing in the PS3 in the first minutes apart from that theres no difference

I honestly see no difference in this video between the versions, aside from one of the takes the PS3 version looks weird, almost like the hands are not in the game (Like they are a different layer or something, and kind of cartoony), but other than that uhh, I dont see how one is better than the others, which is sad cuz ultra graphics should be much better than normal on PC. :/ I think this game could have had better graphics all around, but given how huge is supposedly is maybe they were unable to support huge game+great graphics?

@CarsAndGuitarsx on PC you get the video games for free, if you like it then just buy it and they look way better. Plus the DLC is usually free for like Left 4 Dead 2 where on console you play for it. PC looks better, more memory,equals more dead bodies laying around, memory of where you leave cars. so if Console is strictly better because you can return video games (even tho you can get them all for free first very easily), then my suggestion is stop buying shitty video games.

console gamers keep looking for ways to justify playing with bad graphics :-) It's ok to be mediocre, no sin in that. Someone has to be...

BTW you can sell anything for the right price.

Meanwhile you have to live with the fact that no matter how many consoles you buy, you'll always be 'lacking' in the graphics aspect. You're always gonna have that nagging feeling that things could look much better, that and you're having only half the fun. And the only thing you're looking forward to is finishing the game so you can sell it as a consolation for all the fun you never had...

@CarsAndGuitarsx F THAT! I like keeping ALL my games. Selling is dumb. You must not be a gamer if you are selling all your games. That is why I hate you modern gamers. NO passion for gaming. You just beat a game or get tired of it and then you sell it. Back in the day, video games were WAY better that no one in the right state of mind would want to sell them. Nowadays video games are just here to hold you until the sequel which iis BS. You are a casual gamer. A FAKE GAMER.

@Dannystaples14 You really don't know what you're talking about. Console hardware is ancient. In fact current console hardware was way behind gaming PCs even when they were launched, years ago. My Android tablet has more power than an XBox or PS3 now. You're obviously watching a compressed video here, an in the real world PC graphics are way more impressive than the 720p that consoles can manage, with their low res textures and low frame rates. For reference, I can play games with everything maxxed, at 6014x1200, at 60fps, even with the latest games (DmC, FC3, DS3, Dishonoured etc). It's more than just a few "small shadows".

Along with much more powerful graphics, PC's have more power for the AI, particle and physics engines, a fraction of the loading times (in fact, with SSDs, practically non-existant loading times), better sound (more channels and effects), free online play, free custom mods available, and weekly sales on Steam so recent games are available much cheaper than a console title (cheaper even than 2nd hand console titles).

Over a consoles lifespan, the owner will actually spend MORE than a PC gamer buying the same games, and the PC player will have more options, and can always upgrade piece by piece. Obviously the PC can also be used for a lot of other things besides games. A console has been described as a tax on the stupid. They always have been.

You can actually spend around £200 quid now for a bottom end PC that will still give you a much better gaming experience than a console in terms of graphics quality and loading times. Games companies love consoles because they can make more money out of them.

Yes, you're missing the point of paying more than a thousand dollars for a computer, or buying anything expensive for that matter. You need to meet with Yoda, who will aide you in your quest to find your own vanity. I know it's in you, I believe in you, and someday you'll make me proud by owning only name-brands and buying clothing from Needless Mark-Ups...excuse me, Neiman Marcus, and showing off your BMW.

@Rishabh1995209 Games for Windows live has taken me 3-4 hours to install a single game, what with the re-starting, patches, more patches, notifications to install on my desktop, while the game is in full screen... I've beaten other games while waiting for Windows Live to get its crap together.

@megakick Someone's in denial. PC looks MUCH better than the Xbox. The lighting is much better, the colours are more accurate and vibrant, there's shadows on more things including the blades of grass, there's AO meaning there's shadows in corners where there should be, everything is much sharper and crisper and other shaders like the water look better on PC as well. That's just from a video. If you see them running side by side in person on screen, it's night and day.

@funisall Any PC you buy today, will play FC3 with the graphics turned down - and those "turned down" settings will still be higher than any console. If you spend £50 on a graphics card, you can turn them up significantly, so for £200-£250, you'll have a PC that can beat the hell out of a console, and have a much better control method, much faster loading times (loading from an optical disk is so 1990's!) oh yeah, and cheaper prices for the same games (Steam sales every weekend). So anyone thinking of buying a console now is, well, an idiot.

As pointed out, these side-by-side comparisons are crap really anyway, as the video is compressed, and at a much lower resolution than the PC would be running (1920x1080 is average). Consoles run at 1280x720 at best (some games run lower, and upscale) with much lower res textures etc, due to lack of memory and old graphics hardware.

@funisall also remember the draw distance around the 3:00 mark you can see the comparison weird why they compare the ps3 vs pc ultra and the xbox 360 vs pc medium and that they didn't compare the xbox 360 vs ps3, but to eyes it looks that the ps3 has slightly better mid range draw, but long range looks to be same and horizon seems to be same. i came to this conclusion by looking at the cluster of trees mid range and the bridge long range, another thing the bridge on pc ultra seems to camouflager into the surroundings probably because of the long range shadows. thats just my 2 cents.

@LE5LO@wwefan4ever PC gaming is far from "dead". Valve make a huge amount of money from Steam, so do Blizzard, Activision, EA etc. Consoles are just a cash cow (cheaper to produce games, plus people the companies can make money out of much more easily as they have no other options). PC gamers tend to be more affuent and better educated, and buy a lot of games.

I did buy a PS3 at launch - I've never bought a game for it, I used it to play BlueRays as at the time it was the best BR player. After I got a better BR player, the PS3 was junked - it was way behind my PC in terms of gaming performance, even at launch, plus, thumb controllers are ridiculously clumsy compared to a keyboard+mouse.

@Nafe With consoles, you don't need to constantly upgrade your computer to play the newest games (Not talking about it in terms of how much it costs,). PC doesn't bet the crap out of consoles, you have mods (A great game doesn't need them) and graphics mean shit.

@DrDobalina I think you misread my "consoles are identical in every way" comment. I was actually saying the two consoles are identical in every way to EACH OTHER, not to PCs. I know PCs are better, BUT I don't agree with the price thing.

If you bought a £200 PC you would probably find a handful of games you can play but you would be cut off from any of the new releases and a large proportion of the high end games released in the last three years or so, which is a lot of cracking games you are missing out on.

Sure you can upgrade a PC, if you want to pay for the best components. How much is a GTX 680? I can't see one for less than the price of an entire console on the internet, I'm sure if I searched I could find something cheaper but it will still be expensive. I've had an xbox since 2005 and I HAVE NOT spent more on it than I've spend on my current PC, that is including shipping it off to get fixed when the red ring stuff happened plus the price of xbox live gold and games and I've not spent more than my PC, that is 8 years worth of xbox live and games for less than my PC BEFORE I do any of these upgrades to reach top end performance. I mean why would you want to play a game on low settings? I've yet to find a game I wanted so much I have to buy it despite not being able to run it. You know why would I want Crysis 3 when I know I will probably damage my computer if I even tried to play it on full, which from the gorgeous looks of it, it probably will.

Also having a resolution that high means you have a massive monitor/monitors. That means you either like sitting looking at the fuzziness you get when you sit in front of a MASSIVE screen up close or you sit further away from the screen that you might if you had a smaller screen, that means you are effectively reducing the size of the screen (or screens) that you obviously paid a lot for (before you object I mean it in the same idea that putting a coin over your eye blocks out sight but put it six meters away and it will look tiny). I personally think there is a reasonable limit to screen size which for me is about the time you have to physically turn your head to see different parts of it and from that resolution I'm sure you will have gone over it for me.

SSDs non-existent load times...not from what I've seen. It shaves some time off sure but most of the time it bottle necks in other places, this is unless you paid through the nose for the newest processor and have 32GB of RAM or something.You know because PC components are so cheap.

Yes steam is cheap but I'd be pretty pissed if I just built a new computer and they weren't cheap...I'd likely not be able to afford any games if they weren't as cheap as they were. Meanwhile at my towering stack of xbox games.

That being said PC graphics are and always will be better than consoles as you said extensively in your comment, though I'd appreciate it if you read my comment properly a couple of times before flying off the handle in a PC gamer nerd rage next time.

@wwefan4ever Wow dude you Congratulations on the weakest, most non nonsensical argument ever produced by a human being. First of all, I didn't upgrade my computer till after 6 years. I know have a damn good power house, which will last me awhile. Second of all with a PC you do not need proprietary equipment like a console. Like the Xbox 360 needs a specific hard drive, or a specific memory card so on and so forth. With a PC you can hook up ANY controller, ANY size hard drive, as much RAM as you want, do a RAID setup which you probably have NO IDEA what that is. With the 360 you have to buy THEIR product, THEIR memory cards, THEIR controller scheme. In turn they can charge you as much money as they want to for a stupid friggan' controller. Yea 100 dollars for a small ass hard drive, that's fair. And if you KNOW ANYTHING at all all the Xbox 360 hard drive is a laptop (2.5") hard drive inside a glorified casing. It took 7 years for Microsoft to let people use there own size hard drives with the new slim. But they defiantly banked on all that nice money from it. Also MODDING is possible on PC's because you are not locked out like on a console with special security features on an XBOX 360 that you again most likely have no idea about. Consoles used to be awesome when friends came over, you could paly fun two player games, and split screen. Now it's all about online and Xbox live, paying for a stupid damn subscription. Don't get me wrong I have an Xbox 360, but now I use the controller for N64 Emulators on my computer to play games like Zelda. My 360 is starting to collect dust. FPS is FAR SUPERIOR on PC's due to the mouse and keyboard. There is no way in this world you can get the speed and accuracy of a mouse and keyboard with a controller. IF anyone says so, or you says "well my friend" blah blah blah. You are lieing through your teeth. I wouldn't of cared about what you said, but you REALLY hit a nerve when you said what you said. It's NOT JUST about the graphics.

@russelloh@DrDobalina@Dannystaples14 I am not a PC gamer but it's more than obvious that PC graphics are much better. I have never had any PS3 or 360 game take longer to load than 10-12 seconds. I can spare that for the price I'd pay for a gaming PC plus its upgrades. It's really just a matter of preference, I can live with console graphics and my "slow" load time.

@DrDobalina@Dannystaples14 Rabble rabble. My $4,500 computer does look better playing Skyrim then my $189 PS3 on my $180 22" HDTV. But my computer also cost $1,500 with the monitors costing another $3,000. Steam sales are amazing- $7.50 for Arkham City, last year!- but it'd take dozens and dozens of games to even break even. Sure, a $400 PC CAN outperform a console, but not always- my other $850 quad core i7 puts transparent textures all over LA Noire, which runs pretty sluggish. I think I can tweak a few dozen things in the video card settings, or get a new card ... or just buy it for $15 for PS3. Costs $5 more than it did on Steam Sale, but you know... it actually works.

@Dannystaples14@DrDobalina You're either a troll, or just jealous of people with stuff you don't have. "Nobody should use 3 monitors in panoramic mode" - yeah, that's why the top-end gfx cards are designed for exactly this purpose. It's called an immersive experience. Your eyes have a panoramic view, and having a display taking up a greater part of your vision improves gameplay. Maybe you think that cinemas should only have a 14" monitor on the stage too, huh? After all the big screens are useless. Stupid child. If you can't afford it because your parents are useless and can't earn enough money, fine, but don't make up crap about better hardware being worse than your cheap setup, it just makes you look like a pouting child.

Your ludicrous assertion that SSDs are only a little bit quicker than HDs is equally ridiculous. Boot time is the least of the improvements. There is no seek time, so loading programs, and media (like levels in games) is much faster, and it handles concurrent loads much faster. The CPU isn't going to be a "bottleneck". The fact you think this shows you know nothing about hardware - any CPU, even an old 486 from 20 years ago, can handle data far faster than even the quickest SSD can send it across the bus. The RAM in your PC is also much faster than an SSD. Again, you're probably speaking from total ignorance of using SSDs - which is why you linked some YT video which actually proved my point, not yours. If you can afford it, SSDs are easily a better option.

Then you blithered about having to upgrade the graphics cards to play the latest games. YOU DON'T HAVE TO. Why can't people understand this?! You can use a GTX630 for years - I know people who are still gaming on old NVidia GTX260's, and playing the latest games. My point, which you seem unable to grasp, is that PC gives you the OPTION to upgrade if you like. A console doesn't. If you don't upgrade the graphic card, you're in no worse position than a console owner (in fact games will still look better on the PC, as even a 630 is much more powerful than the graphics in an Xbox or PS3).

The rest of your post was just pure jealousy. Ironically you mentioned me raging - I'm far from it, it's actually funny to watch someone with a console trying to claim it's "better" than a PC. It's like claiming McDonalds is better food than a 5 star restaurant's because there's more of them about and they're cheap. People buy consoles because they think they're cheap and cheerful. They don't realise they're actually getting scalped on the game prices. That's why MS and Sony sell them - they make a lot of money from dumb console owners. Like you.

This really is my last response. You've decended into childish stupidity now and I'm not arguing with a kid who's clearly throwing a tantrum. I hope you're happy with your console, one day your parents might scrape together enough money to buy a PC, then you can come back and argue how much better it is than consoles. I'm not reading any more responses here, but I know you'll have to post one, because you're a kid, and I control you :) So post away with the full knowledge I'll never read it! Bye!

@DrDobalina@Dannystaples14 Yeah they sit in front of monitors but what they don't do is have a panoramic canvas of screens plastered in front of their face. I can sit in front of a PC for hours but three monitors? You think I'm not on the same planet, you really need to get out more if you have that set up, and that goes for anyone.

Ok once again you really need to READ. I didn't say SSDs weren't faster. In fact I agreed they were faster but what I did say is they aren't ZERO boot for games or operating systems. If anything they cut boots times by maybe 20-30 seconds as this video shows:

30 seconds isn't worth over £100 for a reasonable sized SSD, especially if I need a top end PC overall just to stop it bottle necking. Can't do anything with the information on the drive if the processor can only get through it in a fifth of the time.

How long will it be before those older cards can't run the newest games? Then you'll just have to upgrade again, spending yet more money to play the games you want on full. Which was my point originally.

Basically why would I piss around with all of this when I can simply bang a disk into my xbox and you know, play games, which is exactly what consoles are about. Also all this hardware you bang on about, most of the best games ever created were probably created for systems like the PS1 which actually are less powerful than current mobile phones. Yeah graphics are great on PC but it doesn't matter if the game is shit, like Crysis which bored the living crap out of me, and pretty much most games coming out look uninviting and dull.

But you know go back to your cave of computer hardware, this "argument" was started simply because you can't seem to read an opinion other than your own without the rage inside you building up and you throwing a fit because you want to justify and have people drooling over your expensive set up, because it hurts you that people can have fun without having to rebuild their rig every year to keep up with demand. There is NO way keeping up with PC components is less expensive than Xbox/PS3 even if you do buy slightly older models. It is the reason consoles are so popular people don't care about graphics, they want to play games, and especially not if they have to do the sort of crap PC gamers do, haha three monitors!

@Dannystaples14@DrDobalina Must admit I misread your comment initially, so apologies for that. However you're making some assumptions here that fly in the face of reality.

1st off, 1 have 3 monitors on my gaming rig, all at 1920x1200, these are not "fuzzy" - the dot pitch is much much higher than a TV. People sit in front of monitors every day (have you even used a PC?!) Obviously the refresh rate is also far higher, and not interlaced. I'm not going to go into this any more as your comment is just so bizarre I can only assume you weren't serious.

What experience have you had with SSDs then, if you think they aren't an order of magnitude faster than a spinning optical disk? Are you even on the same planet? SSDs have zero seek time, and read speeds much faster than a BlueRay disk, or other optical disk. As an example, the XBox DVD drive is faster than the PS3, at 16MB/sec maximum. A typical SSD now will hit over 500MB/sec - some are closer to 600. That's not a small difference, that's 40 to 50 times faster, even without the non-existant seek time. They are also much faster than even the fastest consumer mechanical drives. It's night and day. My loading times are around a few seconds for practically any game (as an example, in Skyrim, even with maximum settings, high res textures etc, the "loading screen" flicks on and off again too quickly to read any of the text. Consoles are notoriously slow to load content - it's a physical limitation (low/no cache and slow disks). I have 4 SSDs in RAID0 (data is striped across them all) on 6GB/sec controllers and see around 1.4GB/sec transfer rates - close to *100 times* faster than the Xbox DVD. Yeah, I also have 64GB RAM, and dedicate 1/2 of that to a RAM drive. If I run a game from this, then loading times literally disappear - it's 100's of times faster than SSD even.

You can buy a GTX630 for £50 now, and that will run any current game. I'd guess you could even get a GTX620 for under £40, and still play them all. Even at the lowest settings, they'll still be higher quality than a console. Not only because the card is more powerful, but because the CPU in the PC is way faster than the console, so can handle more complex physics and AI . Obviously higher end gfx cards also handle the physics, which makes things faster still. If you already have a PC, and it's not ancient, it's a no brainer to just buy a gfx card instead of buying a console for a lower quality experience and more expensive games.